


Take Me Apart (Just Don't Break Me).

by withoutwords



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Jealousy, Lots of Sex, M/M, One instance of physical abuse, One instance of verbal/homophobic abuse, Pining, Tropes, top!steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 18:05:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5753116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutwords/pseuds/withoutwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What does that mean, done? What about this,” he motions to the office. “Work. Are you done with that too?”</p><p>Steve’s eyes flicker to the floor and back up. He doesn’t look in Danny’s eyes, but at the fading cut and yellowing bruise that adorn his face in the low light. “I’ll brief the others in the morning. You can partner up with Kono.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Me Apart (Just Don't Break Me).

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in some indistinct timeline, so please forgive any exclusion of characters or anachronistic story arcs
> 
> *Please see the end of this fic for warnings regarding the verbal and physical abuse that is not something that happens more than once but has proved upsetting for some readers. Thank you :)

It’s probably the sound, that’s the worst. The sick _thwack_ of the knuckle as it connects with the bone, and the muscle protesting with the force. If Steve were hitting someone else Danny would have winced hearing it, would have thought, _shit, that’s going to hurt_.

Except he didn’t punch someone else, he punched Danny. From the shoulder, quick and sure, and he hadn’t given it everything, hadn’t knocked Danny to the floor – but he’d meant it. Chin’s hand is wound around Steve’s arm and Kono’s just left of Danny’s front and they know it too. They’re ready in case he does it again.

“ _Fuck_ ,” is all Steve says, and he’s not remorseful. He’s angrier, yes, which may be a new record where Danny’s concerned. He’s always flirting with ‘too far’, almost perversely curious to see what would happen if he did go there. To chip off that last, hulking piece of armour and have everything underneath.

“Steve,” Chin says in an urgent hiss, but Steve just yanks his arm away and steps back, to create distance. Danny touches a shaky thumb to his lip, comes away with blood, and he’s not sure how he feels about it. His mouth, the cheek - hell _everything else_ \- is sort of numb.

“Is that it, Danny?” Steve barks, and when Danny lifts his gaze it’s to see Steve’s jaw clenched. His whole body is like some intricate knot that Danny never learnt to undo. “Have you got anything else to say to me?”

 _I’m sorry_ , is the first thing that comes to mind. _I didn’t mean it_ , would work pretty well too. It would also be the truth.

Danny just watches him walk out, instead.

*

The first time they had sex, they’d just come back from dinner with the Governor, one of those, _please accept these superfluous helpings of seafood and beer and continue to make me look good_ , things. Danny had lost count of how many he’d been to at that point, just like he’d lost count of how much he’d had to drink, but it was enough. He had a buzz going, a little hum, like soundwaves along his skin. He felt good.

“Are you coming in?” he’d asked Steve over his shoulder as he’d started to climb out of the cab, and it hadn’t been that kind of invitation. He hadn’t been hitting on Steve. But.

“Alright.”

Steve had Danny pressed to a wall before the front door had even closed. His mouth was biting, sour, those little desperate breaths from his nose like Danny was an intense training exercise and he really wanted to win. The thought had made Danny laugh.

“Problem?” Steve had said, pulling back just a little, and Danny’s dick was so hard in his pants he couldn’t believe Steve was asking him that question.

“Oh, I could go through a whole list of problems, babe,” Danny had said in a gasping breath, cupping his hands around Steve’s ass and lifting his bad knee to get a better angle. “But the fact I haven’t come yet is number one so let’s deal with that first, please.”

Steve smiled – the sort of smile that was usually attached to a grenade or some other form of life threatening justice – and took Danny by the collar, leading him to his room. It slowed down from the harried, uncoordinated mess in the foyer as they stripped all their own clothes off, Danny ending up on his back with Steve crawling over him on all fours.

“Jesus,” was the only intelligible thing Danny could think to say, the bridge of Steve’s nose running up along his body, over hills of skin and through thatches of hair. He opened his mouth at a nipple, tongue warm across it and sucking it in, until Danny couldn’t take it anymore and pulled him up.

They kissed like stupid kids, rolling their bodies together; a tangled mess of limbs and mouths and cocks. Danny’s hands revelled in the muscles along Steve’s back, while Steve had a handful of Danny’s ass, the clench of his fingers like teeth, like marking. Danny really wanted to be marked.

“Lube,” he’d managed to say, and, “Top drawer,” and he’d laid back again and let Steve take over. They didn’t talk about what they were doing, or what they were ready for, which may have been a good idea, in hindsight. It wasn’t the sex that was the problem, Steve slicking up his hand and gripping both their dicks, and bringing them together in one flawless move.

Steve starting at the base, long, slow and grabbing strokes; their faces so close together Danny could feel Steve’s breath hot at his throat. The restrained, grunting noises Steve made as he quickened his pace, and the strain of Danny’s spine as he arched back. The heat pooling in Danny’s fingertips where they were attached to Steve’s skin, or the way he seemed to drift from his body and watch from afar.

The thrusting rhythm of their bodies, and the muscles clenching in Steve’s thighs, like a an engine turning, turning, turning until the promise was just too much and Danny was pressing his face to Steve’s and shouting out his name.

The sex wasn’t a problem, it was everything else.

It was Danny, mostly, and what he wanted the sex to be. 

*

Danny had hit Steve once, too. He’d offered him a chance to even the score, cracking out his neck and telling Steve, “Okay, I’m ready,” just a few days later. Steve had laughed so much even his nose had turned pink, before telling Danny he’d never be ready for that. 

Danny gets it, now.

“Seriously, Jersey,” Toast says from his place perched on Danny’s sofa, an unopened lollipop tucked behind his ear and a gadget Danny doesn’t recognise balancing on his lap. “Not that I’m not thrilled to hear from you brah, but when you said _get over here_ I thought...”

“What?” Danny snaps, and he gets a little satisfaction from seeing Toast flinch.

“I don’t know! That you’d be wearing pants, at least.”

Danny’s wearing pyjama shorts, _clean_ pyjama shorts, so he doesn’t dignify that with a response. He’s got his case files spread out over the coffee table, photos that Chin had sent him, and DNA results Fong e-mailed with a ‘?’ in the text box. His phone’s in his pocket in case Grace calls, again, to voice her disappointment in the fact that he hadn’t shown up to see her, again.

It had been three days since Steve hit him, and four days since he’d seen his daughter, and he wonders at what point he’ll stop measuring time on how much he’s fucking it up.

“What have you got?” Danny asks Toast, then throws down his pencil because he already knows the answer. He’s got nothing, just like Danny’s got nothing, and it’s stupid. Kono had thrown him this case because it had been cut and dry. It had been a way to keep him busy while he and Steve worked out how to proceed.

The case was dead, and Steve wasn’t answering Danny’s calls, and he needed a drink.

“Beer?”

Toast blinks too many times before saying, “It’s ten in the morning,” as if Danny doesn’t know how often he’s baked out of his skull. That’s a Steve thing, projection, always calling out other people’s issues without claiming them as his own.

Lately all things seem like Steve things.

“I’m getting a beer.”

Toast follows Danny into the kitchen, watching him pull out a bottle, pop off the lid. He just keeps watching as Danny collapses against the bench, the beer cool and underwhelming as it floods his throat. It doesn’t help anything other than his ego.

“Who hit you?” Toast asks, and Danny just huffs. Since Five-0 he’s had a bruise every second day. Bruises he can handle. “I didn’t think much of it ‘til you started touching it a lot. I’m guessing it only hurts when you touch it.”

“Wow, babe, you should take up a job as a profiler. I’ll put in a good word.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t a perp,” he goes on, as if Danny hasn’t spoken. “If it was a perp you’d be surrounded by your team right now, and the fact that all you’ve got is me is kind of sad, man, like, really? Am I it?”

Danny’s half way through another long swallow of his beer, wrenching it away to say, “You’re supposed to be helping me with this case, genius, not standing there looking at me like I’m a PSA on all that is wrong with the police force.”

“Dude, no,” Toast says softly, “You’re all that is right. You’re the most decent cop I’ve ever known.”

“And for what? To – to lose my marriage, my home, my family. To lose everything, over and over - ”

“You’re leaving Five-0?” Toast asks suddenly, and as much as it claws at him, gnaws at him – as much as it keeps him awake at night – it still surprises Danny. To hear it out loud.

“I don’t know,” is all Danny has to say, putting his beer down and letting out a long shaky breath he’d probably been holding since Steve’s knuckles shut him up. “I’ve got no idea.”

*

As much as they never talked about the sex, they talked _around_ it. The suggestive questions and the subtle demands and the new shade of flirting that didn’t surprise anyone but them. It wasn’t all that different, really, not the contact or the chemistry, not the way they spent so much time in each other’s space that the lines were becoming blurry.

“You go to the gym, yeah?” Steve had asked once, side by side in the Comaro and ten minutes out from HQ. They’d just busted up a domestic, some expat with anger that swirled so deeply Danny had smelt it coming off him. Danny had used it, had been fuelled by it, had managed to get the guy to ground before he had a chance to jump his back fence.

“Are you asking me if I work out?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I know you work out, I just meant, you know, do you work out at the gym, or at home, or - ”

“I go to the gym,” Danny said, but he was still peering at Steve trying to work out where this was going. Steve swam, or ran, or chased an assailant across town using nothing but his bare body and combat moves Danny didn’t approve of. Where Danny was stocky, layered city muscle Steve was long, lean light brown lines. He was Hawaii.

“How often?”

“Seriously? I’ve known you for how many years and you’re just asking me this now?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that you complain so much about everything I thought you’d throw that into the conversation, too.”

“You want me to start complaining about the gym?” Danny had asked, twisting enough that he could allow for the full force of his argument. Steve had already begun to smile in that wry, here we go again way but Danny hadn’t stopped. He’d asked for it. “About the teenagers who can’t return equipment to where they belong because their mummies aren’t there to pick up after them? Or the sweaty, egotistical meat heads whose tan is so fake they leave imprints everywhere? Or the perky receptionists who tell me to enjoy my work out because sure, babe, an hour of torture is only fun in McGarrett Land, okay?”

Danny shifted back in his seat properly, biting, “You want me to complain about that?” one more time, and Steve had snorted out a laugh.

“I didn’t say want, Danno,” but it had sounded like a thinly veiled lie.

It wasn’t until the week after that the conversation had resurfaced. Except they weren’t in the car, they were in Steve’s bedroom, and it wasn’t so much conversation as Steve muttering gravelly at Danny while he scissored two fingers inside Danny’s ass.

“You look so good,” he had said, Danny on his elbows and his hips up just slightly, trying not to rub his cock against the bed, trying not to come before Steve was pressing inside him, wrapped around him. “All that hard work pays off, Danny, you’re so fucking gorgeous.”

Danny had just grunted, feeling it all, feeling the teasing graze of Steve’s curled fingers on his prostate, feeling his words like a lit candle against his skin. It had been the first time they’d talked like that, either of them, only a slew of fuck and yes and feels good and _please, shit, I’m gonna come_ , and it had worked for them. At least it had worked for Danny. Until.

Until Steve had one hand on Danny’s hip and the other guiding the head of his cock into Danny, until Steve was saying, “I wish you could see this, Danny, I wish you could see how good you look,” and fucking into him, slowly, slowly, until he was fully seated and then starting long, laborious thrusts.

Danny hadn’t said much, had just let Steve put him where he wanted him, let Steve anchor him with a hand on his chest and the other squeezed tight around Danny’s desperate cock.

It had always been like that, dirty and desperate, had felt more like something they needed than something they wanted. It had always felt like two bodies getting off.

“Danny, Danny, Danny,” Steve had grunted into Danny’s ear as he came down from his orgasm, and, “You’re so – we’re so - ”

Steve hadn’t finished, but it hadn’t mattered. They lay there tangled up in the sheets, tangled up in all of this, Steve’s words in the air. 

You, this, we’re – _we_.

*

Danny’s sister, Beth, had met her husband in high school. It was a few years as acquaintances and a few years as friends and then it was a date at this restaurant on 2nd Street that served the _best_ New-York style pizza Danny has eaten to date. She’d said it was natural, their relationship, organic, like the way you learn to walk and talk and hold your cutlery the right way.

She just loved him.

“You love that, don’t you?” Danny had said to Steve after he’d told him that story. He was laughing. “You soppy ass romantic, you love that.”

Steve had just kicked him with a bare foot, sprawled in a lounge on his back deck, watching the sun go down along the coast. Things had been sketchy with Cath, at that point – Steve didn’t say and Danny didn’t ask – and Danny privately wondered if that was the same for them. Not a car crash, or a murder plot, or any of those cliché ways Danny met women. But friends, confidantes, lovers.

“I was just thinking I’d like to meet your sisters,” Steve had said, and Danny had said,

“You will,”

and that was all they said, before it got dark.

*

The next time Danny sees Steve he’s hunched over his desk with the lamp on. He’s swathed in black and amber shadows, his forehead furrowed, and he makes Danny’s heart skip a beat. He feels so ugly.

“Hey,” Danny says quietly, rapping at the open door with just one knuckle. He’d half hoped no one would be here this late, had half hoped Steve would be waiting for him. He’s not surprised that it’s neither.

Steve doesn’t even look up.

“I’m bringing the Yeats’ file back, with some of my notes,” he says, going in uninvited and proffering the folder. Steve leans back enough to wipe a hand over his face, enough that Danny can hastily put his things down and run. “There’s not much there, nothing that links anyone to the threats, but my instinct says it’s coming out of his office. A jealous colleague or something.”

Steve’s huff of laughter sounds anything but amused. “A jealous colleague. How about that.”

“Yeah.” Danny feels the jibe like another fist at his face, but he doesn’t react. “Look, I’ll be here first thing tomorrow morning. I’ve got a job to do, and if it’s alright with you I’d like to get on with it.”

“If it’s alright with me?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I never told you not to come into work, Danny.”

“You also didn’t answer my calls. Or my messages. Hell,” Danny pulls a hand out of his pocket to make wide, sweeping motions in the air. “I could have put it in skywriting and you would have ignored that, too.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did that upset you? I’d hate to think you’d been upset.”

“You know what, don’t do that,” he says, squinting, feeling a sudden surge of _something_ and heading around to the other side of the desk. Steve doesn’t move his chair, doesn’t turn his body to face Danny, but it’s not unexpected. Last time his guards fell down he’d lost what was left of his control. “I know I said things you didn’t deserve, I know I fucked up, but I tried alright, I - ”

“You tried?” Steve snaps, sitting up now. “You think a few phone calls and an email to the work computer is going to cut it, Danny, you call that _trying_?”

“Yeah, I do!”

“Well, fuck you.” Steve abandons whatever he was doing, pushing his chair back to get to his feet. He’s rumpled, and weary, and if it weren’t for the hard edge of his mouth Danny would be tempted to pull him into a hug. “I’m sorry you wasted all that time trying, but I’m done, alright?”

Danny grabs him by the elbow as he tries to pass, reflexive, like catching something just as it drops from your hands. “What does that mean, done? What about this,” he motions to the office. “Work. Are you done with that too?”

Steve’s eyes flicker to the floor and back up. He doesn’t look in Danny’s eyes, but at the fading cut and yellowing bruise that adorn his face in the low light. “I’ll brief the others in the morning. You can partner up with Kono.”

This time when he walks out, Danny doesn’t watch.

*

Danny didn’t sleep with other people. He’s pretty sure Steve didn’t either, not for any other reason than there just wasn’t time. On the nights they weren’t fucking they were working late, and the nights they weren’t working they were going to dinner, and the nights they weren’t eating they were going to functions the Governor had strong armed them all into.

When he also factored in Grace, and sleep and the occasional work out, Danny was surprised even he and Steve had time to get together. They did.

“Try this,” Steve had said one night that Danny was over, a fork in the air and waving gently. They’d been watching the football, which had become an argument, which had become Steve on his knees on the carpet and Danny with his pants half way down his thighs.

There had been no sign of it, after, save the way Steve’s hair was sticking up a little, and the feel of it still ghosting across Danny’s hands.

“What’s - ” was all Danny had managed to say before Steve had thrust the fork into his mouth. It was good, really good actually, something edging towards too spicy but also sweet. He’d never tasted anything like it. “That’s good.”

“It was Mom’s,” he said with a shy smile, ducking his head to go back to the pot. “She’d serve it with rice, and flat bread, and make iced tea, and we’d sit around and eat until we were sick.”

Danny had stepped up enough to rest his back on the bench, standing just out of Steve’s space and folding his arms. “Sounds like a good time, babe,” he’s said softly, catching Steve’s eye. “Maybe you could do that for the team, you know, have a special dinner night.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely,” Danny had assured him, and he’d wanted to reach out, curl a hand around his shoulder, but he didn’t. “Count me in.”

*

On the occasion they fucked in a bed, Steve was never there the next morning. If they hadn’t done it on a bed – if it had been on the floor, or against a wall, or on the sofa with a cushion under Danny’s back and his heels in the small of Steve’s – he wouldn’t stay at all. Danny would sleep on Steve’s sofa, or in Steve’s guest room, or sometimes crawl into Steve’s bed for round two. 

Steve would disappear.

“I’m going to ask this once and then I promise you won’t hear about it again,” Kono says after she’s loaded Danny up with coffee and malasadas. “What the hell is going on?”

Danny takes a bite of his cocoa puff and shakes his head. He loves working with Kono, they’ve always been a good fit, but he knows riding with Chin is a lot quieter and involves a lot more forestalling. “We’re here to make the bad guys talk, not me,” Danny says, and tries to ignore the niggling thought, _you are the bad guy_. “Drive.”

Kono puts the car into gear, but doesn’t give it up. She circles the island with her questions, straddles the shore with her theories, interrogates suspects that look like they’d rather give up their whole life story then listen to Kono harp on about some guy called McGarrett.

It lasts about two thirds of the day before Danny shouts, “ _We were fucking_ ,” so loud the old lady at the crossing has probably heard him. Kono looks like Danny just told her the earth has really been flat all these years; like she was scrabbling around on Pluto for the answer and suddenly Pluto doesn’t exist.

At the first chance, she pulls the car over.

“So, uh, run that by me again.”

“I think I was pretty clear,” Danny says scathingly, then wrenches a hand through his hair. He growls. This is what it has come to. The remnants of something they were doing once, a thing they’d disowned to the point of just giving it away. Fuck. 

“I don’t know what that means, though, like – you were in a relationship?”

“No. We were just us. We were just us except we had sex a lot.”

“Right,” her hands twist around the steering wheel. “Only now you’ve stopped.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but, stopped what? The sex... or everything else as well?”

Danny feels something lodge in his throat. He can hear Steve say _I’m done_ , and know what it means, but at the same time not know a thing. “You’d have to clear that up with Steve.”

“Danny,” Kono says, and it’s like a soft breeze. When she says it again it’s more firm. “Danny. Do you love him?”

Danny thinks of Beth, on her wedding day, with her face tucked tightly next to Danny’s as they danced. She laughed when he accidentally stepped on her foot, and wiped a tear from his eye when she realised he was crying. She’d said, _you don’t have to worry about me anymore, Danny_ , and she’d told him why. _I’m in love_.

“Yes,” Danny says, to Kono, and doesn’t understand why she has to ask.

*

There were times they’d taken the whole thing slow. All of it. Danny would roll Steve’s t-shirt up enough to pin his arms against the wall and cover his eyes. He’d kiss Steve’s tongue with his tongue, savour the warm roll of it, tasting every corner without even closing his mouth. Steve seemed to like slow. He’d undo Danny’s buttons like he was unwrapping gifts, like he was trying to guess what was underneath before laying it bare, before exposing the truth. 

“You know you can take her home,” Steve had said one day when they were sprawled out on Steve’s beach watching Gracie build sandcastles. They were short and fat and skinny and tall and she’d started making intricate patterns, moats around the outside. She was growing up.

“What, right now?” Danny had asked, a little tired from the sun, a little out of it.

There were a lot of times when this was slow, too. Sharing breakfast or taking Grace out or writing reports, knee to knee, combing out the details. The rest of it was too fast, and too much, and painful – the wars and the deaths and the countless times they almost never made it back.

“No, not,” Steve had muttered, pissy, sitting up on his towel. “To Jersey, Danny. To see your family.”

“Oh. Right.” Danny still hadn’t gotten his bearings. “Well – you know. It’s not just about getting time off work. It’s also about Rachel, and the lawyer, and - ”

“I got her to drop a lawsuit against you I think I can get you a week out of town.”

Danny had laughed, gently, rolling on to his side to face Steve properly. Grace’s masterpiece was slowly edging up, away from the water, and he knew Steve was watching her too. He wasn’t worried. “What a hero. How did I ever get by without you?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

They’d had a moment, maybe, a lingering look, but then Steve was breaking it, and jumping up, and offering Grace some help.

Danny had slumped on to his back and smiled.

*

There had been an implant from the Bureau, an agent, Casey Greene. The Governor had insisted, after a string of grisly murders they couldn’t piece together and a Senator that was out for their blood. The government had to appear as thought they were doing _something_ , so they threw Greene into the mix and hoped for the best.

He was six foot who knows and typically handsome and he was only meant to stay for a week. Except one week became two and then three and Danny was starting to feel his presence like hands around his throat.

“Are you okay?” Steve had asked Danny, as if he hadn’t just spent an hour holed up with Greene in his office. As if every other conversation hadn’t started with, _did you know Casey-, did you hear Casey-, Casey says that-_. “Everything alright with Grace?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

Greene had been a journalist, early in his career, had seen a lot of combat and gotten his hands dirty. He was self effacing, and curious, and knew how to handle a guy like Steve. He knew the right questions to ask.

“Are you joining us for a drink later?” Steve had asked, and Danny did his best not to laugh. Us. Like Danny was the afterthought.

“No, I – I’m beat. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Greene was with them for a month. A whole month of fist curling jealousy, of lying awake at night wondering what they had done after they’d finished their beers. If Greene had asked Steve to come in, just like Danny had, if Steve had accepted. If he’d gotten on his hands and knees the way he didn’t with Danny, had taken it, and enjoyed it. If he’d – if they’d –

“What the fuck, Danny?” Steve had yelled, the day that Greene had left. Danny had turned his office upside down looking for something, only now, in the rubble, he couldn’t remember what it was.

“Would you get out?” Danny had shouted back, throwing more papers across the desk so that they all fluttered to the floor.

“What is going on with you?”

“Nothing! I’m trying to find something I left here, alright, just give me a minute.”

“I’ve given you a lot of those lately.”

“Oh, please, as if you have,” Danny said, surrendering to the loss and slumping into his chair. He was so tired, but he couldn’t rest, he couldn’t get his bones to stop shaking. “Just go, Steve, just leave me alone.”

“You’re always alone,” Steve said softly, and, “Fuck you.”

It had been the start of their spiralling down.

*

Danny’s surprised that it’s Steve who finally breaks. It’s always been a good joke, that Danny’s the hot head, that Danny holds grudges so long they start to decay. It’s not untrue, but it’s also not fair, not from Steve, not when Steve is just as bad. Steve can withhold the sort of torture Danny’s only read about in books – but he can also get so angry he makes Danny look like Mother Theresa.

“You look me in the eye,” Steve says when Danny opens his front door to see Steve standing there, in his running gear, glistening with sweat. “You look me straight in the eye and tell me the truth.”

“What truth?” is Danny’s knee jerk reply, because he has a lot of those.

The truth is, he doesn’t mind pineapple so long as it’s not on pizza. The truth is he doesn’t hate Hawaii, and he doesn’t miss New Jersey, not with the same aching desperateness he did back at the start. The truth is he hates himself a lot, for a whole slew of reasons, and the only times he doesn’t is when Grace is here, or Steve is here, or they both are. The only times.

“The truth, Danny,” Steve says again, bracing himself on the doorframe with two hands, spitting out the words. “The reason you looked at me and called me a faggot, the reason you thanked me for fucking you so good, like that was all I’d ever done for you, the reason you - ”

“Stop,” Danny cries, hoarse and sick and he has a hand in the air like that’s going to make any difference. He’s stumbling back into the house.

“What, it was okay for me to hear it but not okay for you?”

“It’s not okay – it was never okay.”

Danny had been seeing red. He’d been seeing a lot of things. The way Steve liked to flirt with their waitress, duck his head and whisper into her ear. The way he spoke to people he needed information from, a gentle touch, a knowing smile. The way he gave it away, and gave it away, and still gave nothing.

The way he was with Danny.

“Then tell me the truth,” Steve demands again, following Danny into the house but not bothering to close the door. There’s a cooling breeze, like an invitation, like fleeing would be easier than this. 

“I fucked up, Steve,” Danny eventually says, with a sigh, slumping onto the arm of his sofa. “I thought nothing had to change, that we could just keep going how we were and - ”

“How we were?” Steve parrots, looking baffled.

“The sex,” Danny says, and he’s throwing out his arms, throwing it all out there. “The sex and us and how it made sense but then it wasn’t enough and I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry that I couldn’t take it all in my stride like some NAVY Seal Commander who’s had a gun to his head more times than I’ve had breakfast, I don’t work that way.”

“Work what way?”

“Casually, you know, just - ”

“Casual?” Steve shouts, and his whole body teeters like he’s not sure if he should come or go. “What part of getting into bed with you is casual Danny? When have we _ever_ been casual?”

“When you fucked me and then left, and kept leaving” Danny counters, getting back to his feet and closing in. “When I woke up without you or tried to say something or do something or touch you and you flinched, Steve, those times, _that_ was casual.”

“No,” Steve says with a forceful shake of his head. “No, you don’t get to put that on me. I talked, I said things, I thought you - ”

“I never left you. I was always at your house. I - ”

“You never said anything, you never told me - ”

“How would I tell you? I’m in love with you, Steve, can you pass me the salt?”

It’s funny, really, how they suddenly come full circle. That telling Steve he’s in love with him is like punching him in the face. His mouth falls open and Danny can actually see his breath shorten in his chest. “Jesus, Danny.”

“I saw you with Greene, I saw you with anyone, and I wanted to break their arm off and use it to wedge you apart. I didn’t want to fuck this up but I can’t keep pretending like we’re the same people we were before we had sex.”

“I can’t pretend that we _aren’t_ ,” Steve snaps, running the back of his hand along his face. “I can’t pretend you’re not the same guy who hates his ex, and hates Hawaii, and even hates me sometimes - ”

“I don’t,”

“I can’t pretend this isn’t going to blow up in our faces, Danny, and I hate that, I’ve never felt like that before.”

Danny reaches out his hand before he even knows what he’s doing, taking a handful of Steve’s t-shirt but not moving. If only taking claim could be as easy as this. If only they weren’t the same force pushing against each other. Doubt against doubt.

“For the record, I’m in love with you, too,” Steve says, and it’s enough for Danny to push him back against the wall, to take his mouth in a piercing kiss. Their teeth clack and Steve groans and maybe Danny could claim a little more. Maybe he could push Steve down the hallway and into his bedroom.

“Stop,” Steve says, so maybe not. It would be _too_ easy, really, and he should earn it. Steve’s worth that.

“Sorry,” Danny says, getting onto his toes, just a little, burying his face in Steve’s neck and his ear and whispering again, “I’m so fucking sorry for those things I said to you. You are better than that. You deserve better than that.”

Steve runs his face, his forehead, along Danny’s, his hands at his throat. They’ve seen each other naked, they’ve done more than Danny could admit, and still, _still_ this is the most intimate thing they’ve ever done. Danny feels it thrum right through him. 

“Are we going to talk about it, this time?” Steve asks quietly, and Danny pulls him even closer with his arms around Steve’s waist. “Are we going to say what we want?”

“Yes,” Danny says, and ducks his head to rest it on Steve’s collar. That's simple. “Yeah. I just want you.”

*

Danny’s been in love four times.

When he was eleven it was a transfer from Tulsa named Tom. He had hair so blonde it was almost transparent and these big, freckly eyes that slanted Danny’s way whenever Tom felt his eyes on him. He was quiet in his assuredness, confident but not cocky, and Danny’d thought about marrying him.

(Tom said they weren’t allowed.)

When he was nineteen it was a girl named Georgia and after her Rachel came along and every time, over and over, he’d be thinking about tomorrow. Next week. Five years from now and what they would call their baby and did they want a house with a fence? Would they get a dog?

Danny doesn’t think about those things with Steve.

He didn’t before they had sex, or after, or even now with his thumb tracing circles on Steve’s sleeping body. It could be Steve’s right, that they know it’s going to end before they’ve even really got it started - it could be he worries every day will be Steve’s last.

It could just be that the moments are enough, though.

It could be he wants time to stop.

*

Danny waits by the front door. He knows he’s exposed here, that everyone can see him – he knows that it’s written all over his face. It’s hard, how he’d fought against that for so long, how he can’t get it back now.

How maybe he doesn’t want to.

“Shutup,” Danny says to the house at large, but there’s no point, Steve’s turning the lock.

“Jesus,” Steve hisses as he goes to step in, his arms up in a defensive stance. His hair’s damp and his skin looks a little gritty and Danny wants to put his mouth to the hollow of his throat and suck. He doesn’t.

“Hey.”

“What are you - ” Steve looks through to the dining room and sees their friends, pushing passed enough to take it all in. There’s tightness to his shoulders, a worry, and Danny doesn’t stop himself from reaching out to touch. “What are you all doing here?”

“Oh, it’s not your birthday?” Jerry jokes, pretending to stand up while Chin holds him down. There’s a strange sort of lull, even Grace is quiet, and Danny feels the anticipation like lead in his gut. He feels like he’s about to get on one knee.

“Steve,” he says gently, “C’mere,” and turns him around. He’s aware of the sudden bubble of talk behind him, the respect their friends – their family – show as he does this. Steve’s looking apprehensive, afraid, and Danny can only begin to imagine the scenarios running through his head.

The worst kind.

“I invited everyone for dinner.”

“To my house?” Steve says, and the slightly peeved tone makes Danny feels better. “Seriously, Danny, I know your place is a shithole, but - ”

“I made your mom’s curry,” Danny admits, to save him from himself more than anything. “With Iced Tea, and flat bread, and cake, for after, because Grace asked me, and if you sit through the whole thing and tell me how long I’m going to have to work out at the gym for I swear I will - ”

“Danny,” Steve says, and it sounds like, _wow_ , and when he pulls Danny in for a kiss Danny thinks the same thing. Wow. Someone catcalls – probably Kono – and Steve pulls away enough to grin at him, saying, “Thank you, Danny, this – it’s amazing.”

“I just wanted you to know,” Danny says, clearing his throat. “I just wanted you to see, that this is where I belong. This is my family. _You’re_ my - ”

Steve kisses him , keeps kissing him as Danny says, "I'm gonna keep trying," and, "I'm gonna try harder," even if Steve's not listening. Danny hears Grace giggle in the background.

*

Steve had fucked him so slow, the next time around, perched his mouth at the spot where he’d punched Danny and promised, “I’m never going to do that again.”

Danny shifted his hips up as Steve sunk in and he felt like he’d been turned inside out. He groaned from his lungs, and couldn’t breathe, could barely get out the words, “I know.”

As Steve snapped his hips harder and Danny found flesh to bite down on all he could think was, _I’m never going to give you a reason to_.

He said it later, when he got the chance.

He told him everything.

**Author's Note:**

> *Danny says some nasty things to Steve - homophobic in nature, but not in intent - and Steve punches him. It happens just once but it is an obviously upsetting thing that could possibly come between them indefinitely. It may be seen as a form of domestic violence as the two are in a 'casual' relationship so please be aware of this if you are reading, and take care x
> 
> [Tumblr.](http://thefancyspin.tumblr.com)


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